


Moist

by Wrathofscribbles



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:26:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24235753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrathofscribbles/pseuds/Wrathofscribbles
Summary: Different backgrounds, different lives, but in some of their choices there's common ground to be found.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Reno
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	Moist

**Author's Note:**

> **Big bold disclaimer that the compilation of Final Fantasy VII and all of its content is the property of Square Enix. I'm only playing in a tiny corner of the sandbox they've created, and own nothing.**
> 
> So I issued the challenge of sending me a word and I'd write a drabble for it, without ever using that word. "Moist" was thrown at me, and this was born. More than likely OOC in places, but that's never stopped me writing before, and I don't even know if it counts as a drabble now. Never was good at remembering which X wordcount = Y terminology.
> 
> Set very loosely in the time between OG/Remake and AC

**1 year, 4 months, 2 weeks, 3 days after The Plate**

“- and then she threw me out the bar! _Literally_ threw me. How is that even possible?”

“... It’s Tifa,” Rude says, as if that explains everything from gravity’s pull to the magic show of pigs suddenly sprouting wings and taking to the sky (although that wouldn’t be magic so much as _fucking freaky who has the alien head **this** time?). _ “Would’ve paid for a video,” his partner’s quiet addition, the bare bones of a smirk flirting with his mouth and Reno well - he can’t let _that_ one go unchallenged. The bastard doesn’t even _startle_ when the elastic band pings off his shades. Hmmph.

He grumbles some more, under his breath, and he’s well-versed in the feeling of _eyes_ on him, knows Rude’s picked up on the fact he’s legitimately out of sorts with this recent development. Knows that behind those shades, Rude’s staring at him, measuring the weight of each word on his tongue before lending voice to it.

“Either start talking or start writing. This paperwork isn’t going to finish itself.”

“There’re memories in that bar,” Reno replies, the last he’ll say on the matter simply because it covers the entirety of his discomfiture.

* * *

**7 months, 3 days after The Plate**

It’s the first he’s _properly_ laid eyes on her since... since _The Plate_ and he slinks in like a cat on the scavenge, well aware there’s a dispute in his very near future the further in he goes, _vividly_ aware he’s out of his depth. He’s still got a sharp smart in his ribs to prove just how hard she punches on a bad day. But here, now, on _her_ turf? Where every territorial instinct she has will be on red alert the second she clocks him? Where every _protective_ instinct will kick into high gear the second she recognises a threat? He’s gonna wind up with his face smashed in and a couple teeth knocked loose and he’ll probably roll over and thank her for it after.

_Better than the guilt gnawing him open from the inside out, right?_

Sure enough, he’s not even singled out the quietest corner when she spots him, and because he keeps bouncing between _where to sit_ and _where’s the danger_ , he sees it. The smile for her patrons vanishes so fast he might as well have smacked it off her, face settling into an expression carved from stone. Empty. _Blank_. Carefully so, but she can’t do shit about her eyes. They _burn_ , even as her spine snaps straight and her chin lifts _just so_.

A challenge he doesn’t meet. A challenge he can’t back down from, either. His own issued when he approaches her directly, well and truly in the lion’s den.

“What do _you_ want?” She spits, and if words were acid he’d be stripped to the bone in seconds. A lesser man would flinch, and a _smarter_ man would leave, but neither man is him and so he slaps on a smirk and replies cool as Shiva’s kiss - he’d like _a drink_ , if you please. He sure as shit doesn’t imagine the creak of leather around her fists, but she’s a _gracious_ host, and _everyone’s_ welcome in Seventh Heaven, she can’t go around denying customers willy nilly without _consequences_.

He’s actually surprised when he survives that first drink, never mind the _entire goddamn night._ ****

**7 months, 2 weeks, 5 days after The Plate**

It’s almost a _game_ between them a few weeks later, this _animosity_. Every night he intrudes on her space and every night she’ll hiss at him like she’s ready to claw his face off. Sometimes he’ll get blackout drunk and someone has the decency to phone Rude to cart his ass back home, sometimes he doesn’t and he’ll nurse one drink the entire night, every second under the same roof as her an agony. When will she do it, he wonders. When will she _snap_? When will that practised calm give out in favour of _confronting him?_ Just what the fuck is it gonna take?

He’s not drunk tonight, just on the wrong side of tipsy, weaving one way on his stool then jerking centre and weaving the other. Loose-lipped, too, if anyone thought to talk to him, but the _suit_ keeps most folk at a respectable distance. She comes at him when most of the regulars clear out and over the blast of the jukebox he thinks _fuckin’ finally_.

‘Cept she slams a glass of water down in front of him, sloshes some of it over his hand for good measure. And while he swears and trips over his own tongue and waves his hand around and wipes it down with the stupid fuckin’ square Tseng always insists on cramming into his breast pocket, she parks her ass down opposite him, and jams both elbows down on the table. There’s no warning _creak_ this time, because her hands are bare of their usual gloves, and the fire in her eyes isn’t quite so bright tonight.

The hell?

“Why do you keep coming here, Reno?” She asks, and if anything should catch him off guard maybe it should be that _she remembers his name_. Instead, it’s her tone, the tired quality to it curling ‘round the words and robbing them of the caustic bite she usually keeps in reserve all for him. Like she’s as weary to the bone as he is. Like she’s beaten down and wrung out and barely hanging on by the tips of her fingers.

Like maybe - just maybe - she’s in the same boat as him.

_You got snarlin’ little beasties crawling around in your head, too?_

But he doesn’t ask that, it’s early days yet, right? She’s more liable to smash the glass on his head and jab him in the eye with one of the resulting pointy bits, right? So he looks at her instead, fighter-turned-bartender, damaged soul under all that easy charm, and lets his own trademark smirk fall just a little. Just enough to clue her in on his little secret - _I know the taste of regret, and it sure is bitter._

“To drink. To forget.”

* * *

It doesn’t make things right between them, not by a _long_ shot. But the water’s her white flag, and his truth an apology. It’s a step in _some_ direction, maybe not the right one.

**9 months, 1 week after The Plate**

She asks him about it eventually, just like he knew she would. She’s a blunt woman, Tifa, when it comes down to the nitty gritty details. Her patience has its limits and beating around the bush as they are, _tolerating_ one another as they are... something has to give somewhere. So she asks him. About _it_. About _The Plate_.

Such a simple question, really. _Do you regret it?_

Does he have an answer for it? Oh sure, he has an answer alright. _Yes._ Yes he regrets it, every damn time he thinks about it his stomach curdles and his skin goes clammy. So many questions circling his head ‘til he’s dizzy: _was it necessary? Was it_ worth _it? How many died? How many people suffered - trapped under crushing weight, their last moments ones of terror and darkness and indescribable pain? How many begged for help on their last breath? How many stretched out broken hands in the hope someone beyond the rubble would grab on and help them free? How many people ripped apart? How many families struck from the census records in one fell swoop? What were their names? Their ages? How many_ kids _died that night?_

“Yeah,” he says instead, voice wavering under all that strain locked up inside his skull, queasy and not from the food he’d ordered (still not poisoned, she’s out of her goddamn mind). He doesn’t know what he looks like in that moment - can’t stand to look in mirrors much these days except to scrape the scruff off his chops in the morning - but _she_ does. Tifa looks at him then and sees whatever he can’t smother, standard Turk mask of indifference be damned, and a switch flips between them. Animosity to _understanding_.

There should be surprise when she closes the bar early, promising discounts for the inconvenience, when she sets a bottle of hard liquor by his plate... and _two_ glasses. Instead he musters up the ghost of a smile and leans back - almost makes an ass of himself toppling right over, but hey, the reflexes have saved him from worse (like Strife’s sword) - daring to drag his eyes from her face to her waist and back up again. “Come to confess to the big bad wolf, doll?”

“Eat a dick, Turk,” she snaps back and twists the cap open, sealing their fate.

* * *

“We, _I_ , killed people, too... when we... blew up the Reactors. Maybe not... maybe not every life lost was immediate but... the riots, the robberies, the people dying at home because their heating went out and never came back on again. I don’t know how many deaths can be traced back to my hands.”

“That’s not the same as-”

“Does the _how_ really matter, Reno? People died. By our actions. By our choices. _That_ is the burden we bear.”

* * *

He comes awake the following morning to the unforgiving _thump_ of a combat boot in the ribs, and bright sunlight stabbing a thousand daggers into his eyeballs, and a behemoth using his head as a chew toy. It’s Strife above him, hands on the table he’s shoved aside to get to him, baby blues gone dark and thunderous and hell if that _ain’t_ a safe wake-up call. From his left somewhere a pitiful moan as Tifa rouses, and _Murder Face_ turns his attention elsewhere, moves in her direction, giving Reno just enough space to try and get his legs under him. Where are his legs again? His - where the fuck’s his _shoe?_

 _“What did you do this time?”_ Rude asks the second the call connects as he trips his way out the bar, and all Reno can manage without upsetting his entire _lack_ of balance is a raspy laugh and cradling his head in his free hand.

“Made a mess, prob’ly.”

**11 months, 1 week, 4 days after The Plate**

“Are you asking me out?” Really, she doesn’t need to look so _suspicious._ What’s he gonna do, chuck her in a chopper and fly her across the continent? Avalanche’d kill him deader than dead in two seconds _flat_. Still, she’s not exactly _wrong_ , which. Yeah, okay, this isn’t one of his better ideas by _far_ but. Hm.

“No? Figured it’d be a better _bonding experience_ if we had a chat while stone cold sober, is all. You like coffee?”

“Who _doesn’t?”_

“Tseng.”

Call him crazy, but her laugh sounds less _hollow_ than he’s ever heard it.

* * *

Marlene nails him in the back of the hand with a fork and Denzel gets melon juice all down his shirt. _Accidental_ his ass.

At least _Strife_ is upfront with his threats of bodily harm if he breaks Tifa’s heart.

**1 year, 2 months, 3 weeks after The Plate**

The next time they wind up under what he’s dubbed _their_ table, alcohol has absolutely nothing to do with it... Well. Except for the sticky residue he can taste on her fingers.

He has enough common sense to make sure they drag their asses upstairs and to her bedroom before dawn. Enhanced senses must suck balls, though, because when Strife drops by the following afternoon he doesn’t even bat an eye at Reno’s perch at the bar (munching away at the remnants of a fruit salad the brats didn’t take to school), but he _does_ when he gets closer and _breathes_. His nose scrunches up as he sniffs in Reno’s direction like a dog - or that snarling wolf emblem he’s so fond of slapping on anything he can get his hands on - and darts those baby blues between his shit-eating grin and Tifa raised brow. _Try me_ , that look says, complete with the _casual_ gathering of her hair into a high ponytail, the flex of her fingers after it. Do they smell of each other, then? How _cute._

“... I don’t even wanna know,” Strife eventually says, and Reno laughs.

**1 year, 4 months, 2 weeks, 3 days after The Plate**

The punch she lands smack on his left pectoral is a _love tap_ compared to what she’s capable of, and instead of the fire he’s half-expecting there’s... _mischief_ in her gaze.

“Tifa -”

“ _Never_ say that word in my bar again, Reno, or I’ll ban you permanently.”

“Yes Ma’am, lesson learned.”

“I might even ban Rufus, too. Make sure the lesson _really_ sticks.”

“Aw naw, c’mon! That’s hitting below the belt!”

“ _Please_. We both know you’d be sobbing on the floor if I did that.”

He pouts (she does have a point). Tifa laughs. It’s fast becoming his most favourite sound in the world.


End file.
